On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 14:49:11 -0500, the infamous Ignoramus31606
scrawled the following:

On 2010-04-24, wrote:
My own experience differs from yours. Can't say that I am fabulously
wealthy, but I worked or went to school pretty much all the time since
I was 16. I did miss something like 6 days of work because of lay
offs. Always saved money and now I am well off. So regardless of how
the world seems to you, there is a large group that has worked hard
and now has a good bit to show for it.

Don't believe me. Then ask Iggy.

Since you mentioned my name, maybe I will make a little comment. I am
not fabulously wealthy either, but I do OK.

Like Dan, I would say that I had some amount of luck, and pretty much
all luck, with two exceptions, came from either working or actuvely
looking for opportunities. I did not win lottery and I never bought
any single stock that made me wealthy. To clarify the stock comments,
I had decent results with investing and outperformed the S&P 500 by
something like 8 points per year, but since I started off without much
money, this was not enough to make me super wealthy.

I had essentially two elements of luck: 1) I received very decent
education in what proved to be a hot area (computers) and 2) I
registered domain algebra.com. Neither of these was done with any
foresight, and obviously I had to work on getting my education, and on
developing algebra.com into a major source of income for me, but
still, the element of luck is undeniable. I did not inherit any money
and came here with just $2,800 of what I saved, but on the other hand,
education was kind of like inherited wealth in many respects.

Don mentions luck as in "I worked and had luck". I sort of agree, as I
said, but there is one more kind of luck.

I would define it as a "negative luck", which is absence of bad
luck. In my case, I did not have a major body illness, mental illness,
I did not have an accident that was my fault and resulted in a huge
liability, etc.

I like these quotes:

"What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of
having a patient, but restless mind, of sacrificing one's
ease or vanity, of uniting a love of detail to foresight, and
of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully."
-- Charles Victor Cherbuliez
and

"The harder I work, the luckier I get." --Samuel Goldwyn

--
....in order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should
not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work.
-- John Ruskin